The invention relates to a device for de-aerating oil centrifugally.
In oil lubrication circuits in which bearings are sprayed with the oil to lubricate them, the oil is recovered and used again. However, the recovered oil is often heavily charged with air bubbles, which give rise to jerkiness in the jet of oil directed towards the bearing when the oil is supplied again to the lubrication nozzle. As this is undesirable, various devices have already been proposed for separating the oil from the air.
The simplest device consists of an inclined plane on which the oil flows for a period long enough for the air bubbles to burst at the surface of the oil layer. The drawback of this device is that, for the de-aeration time to be long enough in practice, the inclined plane needed is rather cumbersome.
Another device makes use of centrifugal action, U.S. Pat. No. 2,401,079 disclosing a device comprising a bowl arranged with its axis vertical and an oil inflow duct oriented tangentially to the wall of the bowl and opening into the bowl at the top of the wall.
The oil is thus delivered onto the inner face of the wall and flows around the wall, descending little by little, before exiting through the bottom of the bowl. The centrifugal forces produced by the rotation of the oil bring about an efficient separation of the air from the oil because of their very different densities, but it is necessary to impart a great amount of energy to the oil for it to rotate sufficiently around the wall of the bowl.